Wall-to-wall walleyes
jam holding cribs in
Little Cut FootSioux,
a small lake adjoin
ing Lake Winnibigo
shish. Wildlife
specialists trap
spawning walleyes,
gently massaging
them to extract eggs
and sperm-partof a
million-dollarpro
gram to stock lakes
lacking suitable
spawninggrounds or
depleted by pollution
or severe winterkills.
course, they were there. The Ojibwa were present when the first white
explorers appeared in the 1600s. Some of the lakes and towns in this
region, such as Bemidji, take their names from the Ojibwa. And the last
armed conflict between United States military forces and American
Indians took place not out West, as one might think, but in Minnesota,
on the shores of Leech Lake in the autumn of 1898.
The Ojibwa are still here, and things are changing for them too.
Legalized gambling on the state's reservations started as small-scale
bingo games in the early 1980s. Today there are casinos built alongside
huge parking lots filled with cars and pickup trucks and charter buses
from far and near. Some call these multimillion-dollar casinos "the new
buffalo."
I went to a Memorial Day powwow near Cass Lake, where I met
Deanna Fairbanks, an Ojibwa woman in her early 40s. A law-school
graduate, Fairbanks is now a tribal judge on the Leech Lake Indian Res
ervation. Her handsome face looked thoughtful when I asked what the
new buffalo could mean.
"The casinos have brought many jobs," she said. "People here today
are able to find work where they couldn't before. And the money
brought in is going to help the tribe become more independent.
"But, of course, there is a bad side to the situation. We are basically
poor people, and some can end up depending upon a windfall... look
ing for that winning jackpot. Some of our people get hooked. They end
up hocking the chain saws they use to make a living. Or their cars."
Bruce Baird is a member of the Leech Lake Reservation as well as
director of Indian education for several school districts. "It will reduce
the tribes' dependency upon the government," he stated. "What the
tribes are going to have to do to survive is to develop managers,
NationalGeographic, September 1992
110